Thrifty Terrors

Monday, June 10, 2013

Someone sent me this photo from a big rummage sale they attended -- not strictly thrift store, but definitely terrifying.

Someone put a lot of work into this doll! Per the tag on its foot, it has human hair and eyelashes, is artist-signed, and is called "Daddy's Little He(lper)" (I couldn't read the whole last word, but I'm assuming). But why did they give it (in the words of one commenter) the smile of Jack Nicholson? (She also said he was missing his axe, which explains the outstretched hand.)

I will devour your soul.

Of course, I was punished for my opinion, because someone else looked at the photo and said it resembled me as a child.

Worse yet, I can kind of see her point.

Which, now that I consider it, raises some serious doubts... about my... personality... heh heh... Where did I leave my axe again?

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Hello again! I must apologize for my disappearance these past few months; on top of my normal chaotic schedule, I've been in the process of buying a house (and stripping paint, sanding plaster, filling out paperwork, moving furniture, packing, and all the other associated complications).

But I'm going to try to resume posting regular terrors for the rest of the summer! And since it's the first week of June, which is the traditional month of weddings, here's something to kick off the happy month:

I can't tell if this is an Italian tenor or a distressed groom facing his new mother-in-law.

Well, maybe that should be knock down instead of kick off. The poor fellow looks horrified. It's a little disturbing to think that there might have been a whole set of these terrified pins -- or perhaps just this one, with a white bowling ball hurtling toward it, trailing a bit of veil down the alley.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

This probably qualifies as a seasonal post that's, well, out of season. But frankly, there's so much trashy Christmas merchandise on the shelves that I could probably run a whole year's worth of blogs on that topic alone, so I'm throwing one in anyway.

Today's terror presents a bit of an existential dilemma. I mean, heaven is supposed to be paradise -- a place of beauty and glory and perfection and eternity, right? And there are angels there, right? So theoretically, angels should be beautiful and glorious and perfect and eternal... yes?

Well, whenever it's my time to go, I sincerely hope that I don't end up in any afterlife where God's operations staff look like this:

They got the part about six wings right, but not the part about covering the feet and face. Which is kind of a shame, all things considered.

What's even scarier than granny-angel's shocking (and aged) appearance is the fact that she's apparently being held up for her angelic pocket change, because the last person I saw reach for the sky that dramatically was Don Knotts.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

It's coming up on St. Patrick's Day, a holiday that, like its fellows St. Valentine's Day and All Hallows Day, has lost pretty much any resemblance to the original holy celebration and is now about things like... well... beer.

And green things.

And especially beer.

Of course, everyone knows that good old Patrick (whoever he was) had something to do with Ireland, so it's tradition to wear shamrocks and green and Notre Dame T-shirts and the like on Saint Patty's day, also while drinking green beer. And in keeping with that seasonal tradition, I bring you this warm Irish wish:

A traditional Irish blessing, usually bestowed right before (or as) the speaker passes out from drinking too much green beer.

...AS WHAT?!

(And just for clarity, this is a ceramic trivet. There is no print on the back side.)

Monday, March 11, 2013

Usually when I feature something on Thrifty Terrors, it's an item so mind-blowingly weird, scary, poorly made, in awful taste, or just unimaginably bad that I feel no qualms about laughing at it.

Which is why when I found THIS treasure at Goodwill, I knew it had to go on the blog, if only as an honorable mention:

Highlander II: The Film Disavowed By Everyone Ever Involved In Highlander.

If you're not familiar with Highlander II: The Quickening, you should know that it's considered by many to be one of the worst films ever made. (Don't believe me? Watch The Spoony Experiment's review.) It's so bad that the rest of the Highlander films -- which, in spite of their cult action-movie status, are not exactly the highest form of cinematic art -- booted it out of canon and refuse to acknowledge its existence in the series storyline. The movie's producers even re-edited the film and re-released it to remove all the [SPOILER] references to space aliens and flying stardust people, calling the new edit "The Renegade Cut."

But this is not that version. This is the original film, in all its terrible post-apocalyptic, plot-holed, planet-full-of-inconsistently-immortal-aliens glory. And it was still in plastic wrap, with K-mart discount stickers all over it. How could I do anything BUT invest 99 cents in this... er... classic?

So I picked up the movie, thinking I had hit the bottom of the barrel for that particular store. But that was before I discovered a whole cache of Christopher Lambert movies.

Nooooooooooooooo!

The postscript to this story is strangely appropriate: Even though Highlander II was "new" in retail shrink wrap, when I finally opened it to show it to a group of friends, it turned out to be a used copy re-sealed in plastic. The previous viewer had stopped in the middle, and didn't even bother to rewind it.